Abram Logan from North Carolina lights his hand on fire in an image taken from a video posted on Vine.

Abram Logan set himself on fire because he thought it’d be fun.

He chose to douse just his hand in alcohol.

“I had a little more sense than to light my whole body on fire,” he said.

Unfortunately, many teenagers don’t. A new trend has exploded across social media called the “fire challenge,” in which teens and adults light parts of their body on fire, quickly put it out and post videos of the experience on social media in hope of boosting their followers.

The Los Angeles Fire Department on Monday warned the public of the dangers of the Internet craze, along with others circling the Internet, including the “salt-and-ice challenge,” “polar plunge challenge” and “cinnamon challenge.” Those stunts have led to injuries and death, as people receive burns from placing ice over salt on their skin, jump into frigid lakes and rivers, or attempt to swallow a spoonful of ground cinnamon in less than 60 seconds.

Of most concern to authorities is the fire challenge.

Last weekend, a 16-year-old from Santa Ana poured nail polish remover on his chest and set it on fire, landing in a hospital for second- and third-degree burns on his neck, face and hips.

“Being burned alive was one of the worst things you can imagine,” the teen, Fernando Valencia, told ABC7. “It’s my fault. I can’t say nothing else besides it was a dumb idea.”

Although no fire challenge-related incidents have been reported in the Los Angeles Fire Department’s jurisdiction as of now, authorities warned teens and their parents to use their brains.

“To play with fire is to dance with the devil,” said Brian Humphrey, spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department. “When people see fire scenes in movies or on TV, it makes fire seem benign. It isn’t. Fire is not something to play with.”

The idea that people are risking their lives for an Internet challenge is “stupefying” to firefighters, Humphrey said.

“The videos don’t convey the very real danger to life and limb,” he said. “We see people who are disfigured, disabled, in lifelong pain, simply because they tried to emulate what they saw in a 20-second video.”

What has prompted teens to go to such extremes to gain social media popularity?

Medical experts say teens often have a predilection to testing the limits of extreme behavior. However, the brain doesn’t fully mature until 25, and judgment is the last area to develop.

“As teens, they’re capable, motivated, hormones raging, emotions out of control. They want these experiences but don’t have the judgment capabilities to modulate it,” said Dr. Moe Gelbart, director of the Thelma McMillen Center for Outpatient Chemical Dependency. “Why else would they jump off a cliff into a swimming pool in hopes they land in a 2-foot circle?”

“We had teens asphyxiating themselves by putting bags over their heads, or going on rooftops of industrial buildings and sniffing Freon, trying to get high,” he said.

Many teens engaging in high-risk behavior have depression, self-esteem and other mental issues, he said.

And, not surprisingly, some are just responding to peer pressure or trying to gain popularity, experts say.

Logan, an incoming sophomore at a North Carolina college, said he has always been fascinated with playing with fire. The 19-year-old said that although many people are doing it to get noticed on Twitter or Vine, he just did it for fun, to post something to show his friends.

On July 18, he posted the Vine, showing his doused hand erupt into flames before he immediately dipped it into a sink full of water.

“So I just lit my hand on fire,” he wrote. The post garnered just five retweets on Twitter and seven likes on Vine.

“People doing their whole bodies, that dramatically, are just trying to get 15 minutes of fame,” he said.

Now that he’s aware of the popularity of the challenge, Logan said he won’t do it again, and if he would have known about the response from the public, he likely wouldn’t have done it in the first place.

“I don’t want to influence anyone to do anything to harm themselves,” he said. “Fire is not something to toy with. You can’t manage it. It has a mind of its own.”